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TANAKA, BANSEN
(21 March 1912-December 1988). Also Isaburo. 9th dan Aikikai. B. Osaka. First taught by Morihei UESHIBA in Osaka in 1936. After the war, Tanaka spent one month in IWAMA in 1951 during which time his private dojo was built in Osaka. This dojo was officially opened in 1952. Morihei Ueshiba spent several months at the Osaka Aikikai dojo at that time. Author of a privately published book entitled Aikido Shinzui (Essence of Aikido, see bibl. ) and chief instructor of the Osaka Aikikai Dojo until his death. Interviewed AN#68. See Pictorial p. 118.

I came across your question about Tanaka Sensei and at the same time someone did send me an interview by Stanly Pranin with Tanaka Sensei . This strange synchro-coincidence made me contact you. If you do not know this interview I will send it to you, you can sense his greatness very well in it. I think he is indeed too great to be forgotten.

I trained in one of his classes, bearing a letter of introduction from my teacher in Tokyo. He was very grumpy about "Tokyo Aikido," sayign that "we do things differently here," and it took repeated polite requests to be allowed to take his class. His technique was all angles, with no curves. For example, on yokomenuchi, he stepped straight into the arch of the "cut," jamming the uke's arm behind his (my) shoulder. I don't recall anything remarkable - if magic is what you are looking for - but he was staunch and strong. And grouchy.

Yumi Nakamura is the head instructor where I practice in Toronto (http://aikidotendokai.com). My understanding is that she started at the Osaka dojo. Yukio Kawahara Shihan, who trained with Tanaka Bansen, was a senior student there when she started, and there is still a close affiliation between them here in Canada. Other senior students and instructors here are also connected with Kawahara Shihan; I am often curious how much the aikido we practice is influenced by Tanaka Bansen's teaching, but there's woefully little information available.

There's some video on our website (on the 'about' page), if you care to compare styles...

I trained in one of his classes, bearing a letter of introduction from my teacher in Tokyo. He was very grumpy about "Tokyo Aikido," sayign that "we do things differently here," and it took repeated polite requests to be allowed to take his class. His technique was all angles, with no curves. For example, on yokomenuchi, he stepped straight into the arch of the "cut," jamming the uke's arm behind his (my) shoulder. I don't recall anything remarkable - if magic is what you are looking for - but he was staunch and strong. And grouchy.

Best

Hello Ellis,

This happens in other places also and I think it has to do with traditional rivalry between the capital and places outside the capital, including Iwama (once part of the Mito domain).

I think Kisshomaru Ueshiba understood this and so never tried to impose a particular way of training all over Japan. (To see what I mean here, imagine the situation if another of O Sensei's older deshi, such as Minoru Mochizuki or even Bansen Tanaka, had become Doshu instead of Kisshomaru, and think what difference this would have made.)

In October 2008 we will hold the 10th IAF Congress in Tanabe, O Sensei's birthplace, so it is quite likely that people from the Kansai and Kinki regions will attend the seminars. I can usually tell almost immediately if a person has trained at the Osaka Aikikai for any length of time, but this might be more difficult for visitors from overseas.

Peter - I always found situations like that to be a fun challenge. How can I simultanteously maintain my integrity (manifesting what I'd already learned) and pay my respects to the teacher I was visiting (by being willing to learn something new and different).

On another matter, I think you are absolutely right - I marvel at K. Ueshiba's "power." We spend a lot of time on this site talking about "aiki," and what makes one the "strongest," but Ueshiba K. manifested "aiki" as a general rather than as an individual - rather than being the strongest fighter, he had the "gravity" to keep the strongest - at least most of them - somehow in an orbit around him.

However, I think his aikido, and that of Paul Lee (Lee Sei-Nan) in Taiwan, is less markedly 'Osaka Aikikai' than that of other students of Bansen Tanaka, such as Seiji Tomita in Belgium and Sadao Kotani, who runs a dojo here in Hiroshima.

Mr Kotani was an old student of Tanaka Sensei, I think in Osaka University of Economics, and his aikido is clearly 'non-Hombu'. His aikido is all 'lines', as Ellis indicated (i.e., not circles, as with Kisshomaru Doshu), but it works.

Paul Lee's aikido, on the other hand, is extremely circular, far more so that Kisshomaru Ueshiba's ever was. So much so that some think it is too much like Tai-chi exercises. However, Paul Lee was once an Olympic judoist and I think he understands all the issues and subtleties involved here.

I once attended an anniversary celebration of the Osaka Aikikai (I think it was the 30th Anniversary). Actually, I 'gate-crashed' the event, since I had to meet Lee Shihan privately on IAF business and Osaka was the only place to meet him. So I appeared and there was a minor panic at the reception desk. Who was this foreign guy from Hiroshima? Then I encountered Kisshomaru Doshu, who simply laughed, told them who I was, and thanked me for 'sparing the time from my busy schedule' (Japanese code word) to attend this event. So I had a ringside seat at the aikido demonstration and saw the vast differences in how basic waza were interpreted. In a waza like irimi-nage these are quite striking. They are somewhat similar to the way that Nishio Sensei interprets basic waza, in his own way.

Of course, Kisshomaru Doshu was looked after very well, but after the demonstration and the official reception, when people relaxed somewhat, there was some talk of Bansen Tanaka and his close relationship with the Founder. There was an underlying assumption that this relationship was as close as--but quite different from--that of Kisshomaru to his own father.

Our dojo has for four years had a relationship with Kenji Kumagai 7th dan, who was a student of Hirokazu Kobayashi, 8th dan, an Osaka based deshi of the founder. Because of Kumagai's influence, some of our waza are decidedly non Hombu (or should that be non Kisshomaru?), particularly irimi nage, as Goldsbury sensei has mentioned. Its apparently closer to the irimi nage of Tomiki or other prewar deshi of the founder. Our dojocho once trained with a deshi of Nariyama of Shodokan, Mike McCavish, who said that the irimi nage styles were very similar.

Our dojo has for four years had a relationship with Kenji Kumagai 7th dan, who was a student of Hirokazu Kobayashi, 8th dan, an Osaka based deshi of the founder. Because of Kumagai's influence, some of our waza are decidedly non Hombu (or should that be non Kisshomaru?), particularly irimi nage, as Goldsbury sensei has mentioned. Its apparently closer to the irimi nage of Tomiki or other prewar deshi of the founder. Our dojocho once trained with a deshi of Nariyama of Shodokan, Mike McCavish, who said that the irimi nage styles were very similar.

It may be a bit more direct then that. Nariyama Shihan was of course a student of Tomiki but was also uchideshi in the true sense of Hirokazu Kobayashi (actually lived at his home) over the course of six years.

Shodokan Honbu has always been an Aikikai dojo with Kobayashi H. regularily teaching there (his own classes and also to the Shodokan people) and since his death his student Kimura continues to teach classes at Shodokan Honbu.

The body type of Nariyama, Kimura and Kobayashi are all very similar and quite different from Tomiki and there is a pretty good consensus that much of what defines Nariyama Shihan reflects this. Kobayashi died a few months after I joined the dojo but when I compare Kimura and Nariyama I agree completely.

Wait a minute. Is anyone suggesting that Bansen Tanaka and Hirokazu Kobayashi were students in the same dojo? I am not sure that this was the case.

Ah I think thread drift is at fault here. Rather than about Tanaka B. it moved to Kansai vs Kanto aikido.

I visited a dojo of a student of Benson Tanaka once in Osaka and after saying Kobyashi H. was never a deshi of Ueshiba M. he decided to talk about other things. Talk about leaving me hanging. Although it was a very interesting time during and after practice, I would have loved to explore that question further.

My impression was that there were two distinct relationships in Osaka. Abe sensei was originally a student of Tanaka B. but I really have no idea exactly where Kobayashi H. fit into the scheme of things.

I was not suggesting that they were students together. I was taking off from your own earlier post about the differences between Osaka area aikido vs. Tokyo aikido. Peter is right about the thread drift. sorry

I was not suggesting that they were students together. I was taking off from your own earlier post about the differences between Osaka area aikido vs. Tokyo aikido. Peter is right about the thread drift. sorry

No problem, Raul.

The original poster asked specifically about Bansen Tanaka, but such is the nature of aikido in Osaka that some thread drift is inevitable. Mention aikido in Osaka and the name of Hirokazu Kobayashi will almost certainly come up. As far as I can see from their students, Kobayashi's aikido and Tanaka's were quite different.

I haven't been to Japan yet (though I hope to go next year for IAF 2008). Am surprised to hear that Tanaka's and Kobayashi's aikido was quite different. The Kansai aikidoka I have met over here tend to talk in terms of Osaka-area aikido as a distinct subset/style (sometimes with the implication that Tokyo aikido is somehow watered down, ineffective or too soft). In much the same way, I believe, that the old Iwama deshi looked upon Hombu aikido, as Chiba shihan once wrote.

In a valiant attempt to combat the thread-drift, I'd like to follow up on my earlier post. I had the chance to ask my Sensei (Yumi Nakamura), and the timing was in fact such that Tanaka Bansen was teaching in Osaka when she started there, and Kawahara Yukio Shihan was, in her words, "the most senior student" at the dojo at the time. As I said, since then both of them have moved to Canada, where they maintain a close relationship. I'm not sure if the earlier poster who talked about a Kawahara Shihan giving seminars in Hiroshima was talking about the same person -- I'm pretty sure the Kawahara Shihan I'm talking about only travels back to Japan to give a seminar (in Osaka, I thought) once a year around the winter holiday. He's also pretty steadfast in his commitment to basic principles and linear efficiency in his technique; whether that jives with people's "angular" experience of Tanaka Bansen, I couldn't say.

In any case, Yumi Sensei described herself as being in Tanaka Bansen's lineage, and that's a piece of info I didn't definitively have before. But, it's still unclear how much of the aikido we practice comes from which influence; our dojo also has senior students/teachers who have or had relationships with Yamada Sensei, Tamura Sensei and Kanai Sensei, so I'm sure there's some kind of blend going on that would be hard to untangle--and wouldn't that be the case with many/most dojos in North America these days? How much of an earlier generation's aikido can we hope to reliably and/or "purely" reconstruct, anyway? Is that what we should be striving toward? Food for thought.

Last edited by lamech : 06-08-2007 at 01:50 PM.
Reason: (fixed a typo)

I'm not sure if the earlier poster who talked about a Kawahara Shihan giving seminars in Hiroshima was talking about the same person -- I'm pretty sure the Kawahara Shihan I'm talking about only travels back to Japan to give a seminar (in Osaka, I thought) once a year around the winter holiday. He's also pretty steadfast in his commitment to basic principles and linear efficiency in his technique; whether that jives with people's "angular" experience of Tanaka Bansen, I couldn't say.

Mr Friedman,

I am the poster who stated this and I am certain that it is the same person. I very much doubt that there are two Yukio Kawaharas Shihans currently living in Vancouver who were aikido students of Bansen Tanaka. The Yukio Kawahara I was referring to received his 8th dan recently and I actually participated in a seminar he gave in Fukuyama. It was a few years ago, during the summer.

I am the poster who stated this and I am certain that it is the same person. I very much doubt that there are two Yukio Kawaharas Shihans currently living in Vancouver who were aikido students of Bansen Tanaka. The Yukio Kawahara I was referring to received his 8th dan recently and I actually participated in a seminar he gave in Fukuyama. It was a few years ago, during the summer.